"Who would have thought it possible that 13 Russians, 3 entities and a little cash could decide an American presidential election? Yet this is where Russiagate stands today..."

If the argument is that an inexpensive plan hatched by a small number of people could not, by definition, have had a decisive effect on an election, well, there are ample examples from history proving otherwise.

To take just one, Allan Hunsperger's Lake Of Fire sermon is regarded as playing a pivotal role in rallying liberal Albertans to the Tory party in 2012, thus blocking the otherwise likely ascension of Wildrose. I don't know how many people were involved in the decision to publicize that speech, but it couldn't have been more than a half dozen or so. And the cost must have been close to nothing.

Of course, there was nothing illegal about that move, unlike what is being alleged about what these indicted operatives did in the US.

Question. Where exactly are the 13 Russians who have been indicted? Are any of them still living in the USA(if indeed they ever were)?

If they all went back to Russia, or never left there, I'd assume that the chances of them being arrested and put on trial are pretty remote.

As far as I know, they all live in Russia, but that does not make the indictments meaningless. The effect is that these individuals are unable to travel, for business or pleasure, through any country that has an extradition treaty with the U.S. Here is a summary from last July of a few recent cases.

"...I have to admit my definition of what the Russians did is unfortunately 'honorable state espionage'. A foreign intelligence service getting the internal emails of a major political party in a major foreign adversary? Game on. That's what we do.

By the way, I would not want to be in an American court of law and be forced to deny that I never did anything like that as director of the NSA..." [Michael Hayden - director of the NSA under Clinton and Dubya and CIA director under Bush and Obama.]

That's a half hour video. For the first thirty seconds, he talks about some live event they hosted, and rattles off a bunch of names of people who attended, all unfamiliar to me. After that, I stopped listening.

Seriously, if there's a good point being made, it's probably available in a handier form than a half-hour video. Or at least let us know what part of the video to skip to in order to get the salient comments.

"...This is mind-numbingly stupid. Does Mueller really think he can cobble together a case against 13 foreign-born defendants based on the thin gruel of Russian support for 'Black Lives Matter, Jill Stein, and Donald Trump?' Good luck with that Bob.

The whole thing is ridiculous and anyone with half a brain knows it's ridiculous. The only reason this fiasco continues to drag on, is because mandarins in the US National Security State run everything and they've decided that they can invent whatever suits their foreign policy agenda and the rest of us will simply accept it in silence or be denounced as 'Putin apologists' or 'Kremlin stooges'.

Even though this Russian chaos campaign began in 2014, most of the money spent was still AFTER the 2016 election. According to Byron York, “Just 44 percent came before the election, while 56 percent came after the election.”

The Budget for This Operation Was Laughably Small

Starting in September of 2016, two months before the election, the Russians spent a measly $1.2 million a month. When you compare that to the billions spent by Trump, Hillary, special interest groups, and the anti-Trump corporate media, it is like dropping a teaspoon of water into a boiling cauldron.

Spent here, presumably. Not at the troll factories. And considering they didn't plan to win, or have to cover up the scam, it's not surprising there was a higher cost after the fact. Never mind that they are gearing up for the next one.

"However much Russiagate may annoy Trump personally, administration officials like HR McMaster are seizing on it to advance a militant agenda at home and abroad. Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss."

"...It is quite evident that this campaign of self-inflicted chaos is a project of the global corporate class, manifesting elsewhere in the 'West' in remarkably similar fashion, but with local characteristics. Russia is, thus, charged with attempting to subvert governments around the world through minions like the St Petersburg outfit. Through their servants in the Democratic Party, the corporate media, and the intelligence agencies, multinational capital has used Trump's election to inflict a kind of shock treatment on their domestic polities -- a very dangerous gambit, especially in the US, with its weak social contract and immense capacity for civil violence.

More dangerous, is the whipping up of war fever based on Russia's non-existent aggressions (Ukraine, Syria) and fabricated ambitions (the demise of the 'West'). They are preparing the landscape for a regime of permanent austerity and war, and plan to suppress all opposition on the Left. That's why Black Agenda Report and a dozen other Left websites were named and defamed as Russian fellow travelers and purveyors of 'fake news' by the Washington Post, the plaything of the CIA-partnered oligarch, Jeff Bezos.

A lot has happened in the space of a little over a year. Based on Russiagate-era interpretations of 'law' and civil propriety, free speech is in the political eye of the corporate owners of media. The shrinking of the digital world that is accessible to the Left is well underway, with no workable alternatives in sight. The Russiagate express keeps on rolling, despite the fact there is still no evidence for the original contention, that 'the Russians' and Vladimir Putin conspired to steal and reveal the emails of the DNC, Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.

Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy AG, emphasized that there is no evidence that any actual votes were altered or tampered with in the 2016 presidential election. No matter. The Democrats keep imagining other 'Pear Harbors' worthy of going to war over, because their project is to harden the political system for endless war and austerity."

President Trump’s one-time campaign aide Richard Gates is expected to plead guilty in the special counsel’s criminal case against him, setting up the potential for Gates to become the latest well-informed Trump insider to assist in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential contest, according to sources close to the matter.

The potential for a guilty plea could dramatically change the dynamics in the investigation, just one day after special counsel Robert Mueller added a raft of new financial and tax charges to the criminal case against Gates and his longtime colleague, Paul Manafort.

Federal investigators are scrutinizing whether any of Jared Kushner's business discussions with foreigners during the presidential transition later shaped White House policies in ways designed to either benefit or retaliate against those he spoke with, according to witnesses and other people familiar with the investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has asked witnesses about Kushner's efforts to secure financing for his family's real estate properties, focusing specifically on his discussions during the transition with individuals from Qatar and Turkey, as well as Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates, according to witnesses who have been interviewed as part of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 election.

"...And while no one has pinpointed evidence of Trump auctioning off his foreign policy to any Russian oligarchs, he has definitely tailored his policy toward Israel. In my talk I consider how the Russiagate narrative is actually helping Israel and its lobby in particular ways....

'Rather than colluding with Russia, senior members of Trump's team were really working with Israel to advance ITS agenda..."

That's because #Russiagate, from the start, was framed as an indictment not just of one potentially traitorous Trump, but all alternative politics in general. The story has evolved to seem less like a single focused investigation and more like the broad institutional response to a spate of shocking election results, targeting the beliefs of discontented Americans across the political spectrum.

Two years ago, remember, the American political establishment was on the ropes. Donald Trump, a race-baiting game show host who'd run for office as a publicity stunt, was galloping to the Republican nomination in a rout. He got 14 million primary votes; the Republicans' chosen $100 million man, Jeb Bush, got 286,000. On the Democratic side, the overwhelming party favorite, Hillary Clinton, was fighting to hold off a Corbynite socialist with little money and even less institutional support." ...

"

From Trump to Bernie Sanders to Brexit to Catalonia, voter repudiation of the status quo was the story of the day. The sense of panic among political elites was palpable. The possibility that voters might decide to break up the EU, or put a Trump, Corbyn, or Sanders into power, led to a spate of "Do we have too much democracy?" essays by prominent think tankers and nationalpress figures.

Two years later, the narrative has completely shifted. By an extraordinary coincidence, virtually all the "anti-system" movements and candidates that so terrified the political establishment two years ago have since been identified as covert or overt Russian destabilization initiatives, puppeteered from afar by the diabolical anti-Western dictator, Vladimir von Putin-Evil."

The possibility that voters might decide to break up the EU, or put a Trump, Corbyn, or Sanders into power, led to a spate of "Do we have too much democracy?" essays by prominent think tankers and nationalpress figures.

I dunno. Most of the coverage of "Russiagate" that I've been reading in the MSM doesn't seem to go out of it's way to link Sanders or Corbyn with Trump as beneficiaries of the alleged interference, except in cases where there actually was a relevant connection(eg. some of the memes supposedly posted by the Russian trolls were pro-Sanders). And even then, that doesn't tend to get excessively emphasized.

Jill Stein might suffer more from guilt-by-association, but let's be honest here, when your political party's leadership debate was hosted by Russia Today, it's not illegitimate for people to speculate that you might be benefiting from Russian patronage in other ways as well.

I agree that the U.S. oligarchs are trying to use the Russian meddling to smear all non-conforming groups, but that is nothing new. Here is a short clip of Chomsky in the late 80s, describing a report of the Trilateral Commission entitled "The Crisis of Democracy". He explains that the crisis was that there was too much democracy back in the 1960s as groups such as women, youth and gays became politically active, threatening the dominance of the current rulers.

Now everything old is new again, and a small (but unacceptable) amount of democracy seems to be breaking out. In my opinion, Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election did happen, and it is a real problem, but it is also being used dishonestly by the most powerful factions to smear people who simply demand to have their voices heard in a so-called democracy.

Michael: I am going to rejoice in this relatively rare moment of total agreement I am experiencing with you right now. Bonus warm fuzzies for me due to your link to the Chomsky video (which I've seen before, but I always have time for Chomsky).

"Ultimately, Russiagate is about silencing inconvenient viewpoints regardless of whether they have anything to do with Russia, Blumenthal argued. 'There is an attempt at suppressing anything that's outside the establishment narrative,' Blumenthal said.

On Wednesday, a group of congressmen called for Al Jazeera to be designated a 'foreign agent' for its 'anti-American and anti-Semitic broadcasts.' The bipartisan letter, addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, coincided with an announcement that the Qatar-funded broadcaster was releasing a film on Israeli lobbying in the US.."

Democracy Now has an interview up (22 min) with former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, author of “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq”. And just for Magoo, a transcript is also available.

Democracy Now has an interview up (22 min) with former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, author of “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq”. And just for Magoo, a transcript is also available.

Excellent, thanks Michael. Not as sexy as Russian meddling, is it? And it should only be Part 1 of a long series.

Too bad history isn't taught to Canadian kids. Maybe one day.

Speaking of meddling in elections, here's one of many examples from that great democratic hero JFK:

Correct. If it's ever proven that Russia covertly and significantly interfered in U.S. elections, it should be condemned for doing so.

But for U.S. Democrats and other wannabe progressives to stridently condemn Russian interference, while studiously ignoring/whitewashing their own country's (and their own party's) decades of identical crimes, only taken to an exponential power, and ongoing to this day? That's nothing short of obscene. And the underlying notion that AMERICA could never elect a neo-fascist buffoon like Trump without some foreigners subverting AMERICAN DEMOCRACY™? That's crossing the border into tragi-comic self-righteousness.

Furthermore, that campaign did not involve the Americans allegedly stealing documents from Diefenbaker's office, and Pearson then going on TV and asking the Americans to release them. Which would have taken matters outside the realm of dubious-but-still-legal diplomatic maneuverings, into that of outright criminality, such as Mueller is investigating in the USA.